


I Just Need Time

by startrekkingaroundasgard



Series: 31 Days of Ficmas 2020 [19]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Blood, Dissociation, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Life Model Decoys, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Torture, Trauma, Violence, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:21:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28170864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startrekkingaroundasgard/pseuds/startrekkingaroundasgard
Summary: Captured by HYRDA, the reader is tortured by an LMD version of the man that they love. When they are rescued and return home, it is a difficult transition to make.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Reader
Series: 31 Days of Ficmas 2020 [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2035468
Kudos: 20





	I Just Need Time

“You deserve this, sweetheart.”

Clint’s soft blue eyes never left yours as he cut into you, so full of admiration for what you were becoming. At first, the light pressure of the scalpel was fine. You’d had worse paper cuts than this. But then he thrust the blade deeper into you abdomen and a blinding pain erupted through your core as he twisted. You tried to scream but your voice was silent – just another of his modifications to turn you into the most perfect version on yourself that he thought you could be.

“I only want to help you be better.”

Tears rolled down your face, cold and salty on your tongue. Months ago, when he first brought you here, you had never cried. You refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing how each neat cut and every sharp word affected you. However somewhere along the way you’d learned that he enjoyed seeing you cry, that embracing your weakness was sometimes enough to get him to stop.

He craved your submission. Got off on it, even. So you cried and Clint would stop hurting you. Once in a while, he would even smile that sweet, goofy smile that made your heart skip a beat and you’d cry harder, thinking of the man you had loved and the monster that stood before you today.

You knew they weren’t the same people. Of course you did. After your first week of being bound to a bed and operated on, you’d broken free and tried to stab the man that claimed to love you. Learning that he was an LMD hadn’t made it any easier when he’d pushed you back down and kissed you to submission.

“No one else will ever be able to hurt you after I’m done.”

There were times, like today, when he never stopped. Your tears encouraged him to push further, to go ahead with even riskier procedures. And all you could do was lay there, paralysed but still able to feel every agonising cut, as he removed pieces of your organs and replaced the flesh with biomechanical implants to make you ‘stronger’.

Clint spoke constantly throughout the operations, the soft drawl that had once brought a smile to your face now enough to make your stomach churn. Like some Pavlovian response, phantom pains peaked through your body, ghostly reminders of all the things he had done to you in the name of physical improvement.

Your shoulder ached, the titanium ball which replaced bone too heavy, the scars on your back neatly sewn with care. Your lungs burned, memories of hours in a gas chamber spent choking to death – “adapting to new environments” – as recent as yesterday. The soles of your feet screamed, blisters from standing on burning metal and fifty kilometre runs layered so thickly on top of each other that it was a miracle you could walk at all.

“This is for your own good, you know. You’re so reckless sometimes. When this is all done, you won’t ever have to worry about being dying to save another again. You will be unstoppable.”

A sharp pain in your kidney snapped you back to the present and wave after wave of spasms rocked your body as the device integrated itself with your biology. You could feel its metal claws digging into your cells, the sharp talons tearing multiple paths through the organ and encasing it in a cold, unnatural cage.

You ended up on the floor, warm blood pooling around you, bile burning your throat as you struggled to breathe. Clint stood over you, watched curiously as you fought the implant and slowly lost. He crouched down and swiped a finger through the bloody smears beneath you, shaking his head in disappointment.

A filthy rag, damp and gross, landed on your face. “Clean this up,” he ordered. “Then I will sew you back up and we can get some dinner. How does that sound, sugar?”

***

Dusty blond hair tickled your neck. His arm lay limply over your waist. What space there had been between you was crossed during the night, Clint’s unconscious mind drawn to be near you after so long. You held your breath until he rolled over, a half snore catching in his throat, and relief washed over you.

You scrambled out of bed and sped to the bathroom, quiet as a mouse. You froze when a floorboard creaked underfoot but he didn’t move, didn’t so much a twitch beneath the covers. Locking the door behind you, as if the broken latch could actually keep anything out, you fell in front of the toilet and promptly emptied your stomach of what little food it contained.

A cruel voice whispered that this was where you belonged, on your knees, head in the toilet. Vicious lies but ones that had grown impossibly stronger after almost 6 months in the captivity of HYDRA and their awful LMD. While that robotic shade of Clint had showered you in praise, told you how strong you could be, your own demons had declared the exact opposite. You were weak for not escaping sooner, for allowing yourself to be captured in the first place.

You washed out your mouth under the tap and brushed your teeth, but it did little to make you feel fresh. As you stared into the mirror, counting the fading bruises and neat scars that now littered your body, given so ‘lovingly’ by the LMD that so proudly wore the face of the man you loved, you stiffened at the quiet knock on the door.

“Are you okay in there, Y/N?”

You gripped the counter edge. “I’ll just be a second.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No.”

You took a long breath. It wasn’t Clint’s fault. None of this was his fault but you still felt sick every time you heard his voice, felt the sharp blades cut into and tears spring to your eyes. He was trying so hard to help you settle back in to a normal life, to over come some of the extensive trauma HYDRA had left you with, but sharing a bed with a man that shared the face of your torturer and waking up feeling a stranger in your body was not something that could be so easily solved.

It wasn’t as if you had stopped loving Clint. He was the man you had chosen to spend your life with, a partner through the thick and the thin. Knowing how he hated feeling helpless, you chose to throw him a bone. You walked towards the door and splayed your hands across the wooden panels, wondering if he had a similar stance. Forehead against the door, you steadied yourself and said, “Maybe… Maybe you could cook us some breakfast?”

His enthusiasm was obvious. You could practically hear him bouncing with hopeful joy. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that, sugar.”

You winced at the pet name. There was so much that Clint didn’t know about your time in captivity. You’d spared him from the details, even kept a large proportion out of the official report. Your superiors knew, of course they did, but hadn’t pressed you for anything further. They would eventually, as soon as the SHIELD psychologists deemed you ready to talk, but for now you carried the weight of those months, forced to face every cruel reminder alone.

Clint bounded downstairs to the kitchen and you took the time to get dressed in peace. There was something so grounding about the process. Your captors had given you one single outfit to wear, effectively hospital gowns which left you constantly exposed. Back in the relative safety of your own home, you had a choice. Agency.

Before all of this, if you had had a particularly tough mission you would have thrown on one of Clint’s oversized, tattered hoodies and jeans. Surprisingly, those memories were untainted and you took a moment, perched on the foot of your bed, to let them wash over you.

Clint always smiled at seeing you in his clothes, found comfort in the idea that you used his possessions, an extension of himself, as armour to keep you safe. He gave you the space you needed, never touched you unless you initiated first and never asked you how you were feeling. Exactly what you needed now.

That in mind, you rummaged through his drawers and pulled a huge, misshapen, purple sweatshirt from the back of the drawer. It was practically threadbare in places, the seams were unravelling around the hem and whatever design had once proudly sat in the centre was long gone, little more than a few remaining spots of white.

You lifted it your face and breathed in the musty smell. That was the one thing HYDRA had never gotten right. They’d never made their LMD smell the same as Clint. It was something indescribable, a familiarity that you could only voice as ‘home’. As you slipped it over your head, the long, stretched sleeves covering your bandaged hands, you felt, for the first time in weeks, that maybe there was still hope. That maybe there was a chance you could move past this after all.

The banister was wrapped in tinsel. A large wreath hung on the front door. A Christmas tree sparkled in the living room. As you walked past all the decorations, wondering if Clint had always gone so hard or whether the extra decorations were meant as some kind of celebration on your return, you couldn’t bring yourself to be excited by any of them. Not even the bizarre little wooden nutcrackers on the table made you smile.

Clint hummed to himself as he cooked, unaware of your presence. Elbows on the table, you watched him spin around, flipping a coffee pot and somehow catching all of the boiling liquid that poured from the spout as it cartwheeled through the air. He was a ridiculous man, you thought fondly, but the thought soon vanished when he plucked a knife from the chopping block.

You watched, frozen to your seat, as he sliced the fruit to top his famous pancakes. In your heart, you knew he would never turn it on you. Your mind, however, couldn’t shake the memories of when he – the LMD – had. You squeezed your eyes shut and began one of the many exercises that the therapists had suggested until your heart rate slowed.

Back in the kitchen, the pan sizzling away, Clint still humming off key, the knife now in the sink, you tapped the counter to let your presence known. Clint blew you a kiss, winked ridiculously, then dropped a huge stack of pancakes in front of you. Bowls of chopped fruit followed, along with a choice of five different syrups.

You simply grabbed the nearest and drizzled a little on. Using your fork, you broke off a little and swallowed it before you had time to taste it. With a little smile, you said lightly, “These are great, Clint. You didn’t need to go to all this effort. I would have been happy with toast.”

He shrugged, happily chewing away at another large forkful of pancake. Truly, it was a wonder the man was allowed outside. He had the manners of an ape. “You deserve it, sweetheart.”

You couldn’t say how you ended up on the living room sofa or when Natasha arrived. She noticed you stir immediately and all but shoved Clint out of the nearest door. Hands always where you could see them, she sat on the furthest end of the sofa and calmly explained, “You’re alright. You just… You were somewhere else for a while there. What was the last thing you remember?”

“Pancakes. Then Clint…”

You buried your face in your hands and Natasha rubbed your back as you doubled over and sobbed. Through great heaves, you tried to speak but it was too much. Natasha remained silent until you finally pulled yourself together. She offered you a mug of slightly cold tea to soothe your throat. It didn’t do much good but you appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

She didn’t complain when you squeezed her hand so tightly that the skin turned white, knowing it was the only way you could bring yourself to put it into words. But you could only say it once, that much you knew. So, you also had her bring Clint back. He sat beneath the Christmas tree, strands of tinsel caught in his hair, as unassuming as he could make himself.

Then, you told them everything. What the LMD had done, how he baited you, made you ‘stronger’ and praised you when you wept. Natasha shielded her repulsion behind a blank gaze but Clint was not so skilled. It almost hurt more to see him so horrified, to look at you with such pity, than it did to relive the terrors.

Silence fell, thick and uncomfortable like oil on your skin, until Clint finally spoke up. “How can you bear to stay here, after all that?”

“Because it wasn’t you. I know that. I just… I need time.”

He nodded. “Is there anything else I can do?”

You considered it a moment then decided that there was, in fact, one small fix that could possibly be the first step to rebuilding your relationship. “I don’t want you to call me sugar, or sweetheart, or any of the things you have in the past. He… tainted them. But if you came up with something new…?”

“Reindeer-cakes,” Clint instantly suggested. Met with raised eyebrows from both you and Natasha he reconsidered. “My little orange? Turkey-schmoo? Nutmeg?”

“What is it with you and food?” Natasha muttered.

You rolled your eyes and said, “I like nutmeg.”

“Then nutmeg it shall be.”

You shared a soft smile with Clint across the room, his steely blue eyes softening. His concern was still as obvious as the scars on your face but it was a first step that might set you on a rocky path to something better. There was only one was to find out what the future had in store for you and, even after everything, there was no one you trusted more to be by your side than Clint.


End file.
